Pussy Riot Sprayed With Paint at McDonald’s

Recently freed punks subjected to more violence

Pussy Riot’s Maria “Masha” Alyokhina and Nadezhda “Nadia” Tolokonnikova have been victimized yet again. The Guardian reports that the two activists were recently attacked by several men at a McDonald’s in the city of Nizhny Novgorod. As seen in a video Pussy Riot uploaded to YouTube on Thursday, Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were sitting in the restaurant when they were approached by the group, who threw garbage and green paint on them while screaming obscenities.

As Pitchfork points out, one man yelled, “[Go] to America!” while another screamed, “Get out of town, fucking whores.” Alyokhina wrote on Twitter that the assault happened while she and Tolokonnikova were en route to a local penal colony where she served her nearly two-year prison sentence.

In the video, which can be seen below, Tolokonnikova shouts, “It hurts!” as the attackers shoot paint in her face with a syringe. “You don’t have the right to hurt me,” she says. “Please don’t do that to anyone anymore.”

Alyokhina claims that she suffered head injuries and that Tolokonnikova sustained chemical burns. Tolokonnikova believes that local police are to blame for the confrontation, but law enforcement authorities declined to comment, saying only that they are investigating the incident.

“They can say it was a provocation by the law enforcement authorities,” a police spokeswoman said. “The law enforcement authorities can say it was a PR-stunt by Pussy Riot. We don’t deal with rumors.”